About

Rick Salay is a research associate in the Department of Computer Science of the University of Toronto, and in the Department
of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo. He received
a B.A.Sc. and M.A.Sc. in
Systems Design Engineering from University of Waterloo and a Ph.D. in Computer
Science from the University of Toronto. Prior to his Ph.D., he had a 15 year
career in advanced software product development holding various senior software
design roles, most recently as chief architect at InSystems
Technologies Inc. (now Oracle).

Research

Research statement: Graphical models are a
key tool for taming the complexity of developing large safety-critical systems,
yet they lie at the border of some fundamental dichotomies: cognition vs.
computation, non-formal vs. formal languages and practice vs. theory. This
makes them both interesting and challenging. In my research, I develop formal
theories about non-formal concepts like modeler intent and modeler uncertainty
in order to provide a foundation for tool support that will helppractioners.